untrodden by the foot of the explorer. Even at this
hour, the traveller may journey for days on grass-grown plains, amidst
groves of timber, without seeing tower, steeple, or so much as a chimney
rising above the tree-tops. If he perceive a solitary smoke, curling
skyward, he knows that it is over the camp-fire of some one like
himself--a wayfarer.

And it may be above the bivouac of those he would do well to shun. For
upon the green surface of the prairie, as upon the blue expanse of the
ocean, all men met with are not honest. There be land-sharks as well as
water-sharks--prairie pirates as corsairs of the sea.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

No spectacle more picturesque, nor yet more pleasing, than that of an
emigrant caravan _en route_ over the plains. The huge waggons--"prairie
ships," as oft, and not inaptly, named--with their white canvass tilts,
typifying spread sails, aligned and moving along one after the other,
like a _corps d'armee_ on march by columns; a group of horsemen ahead,
representing its vanguard; others on the flanks, and still another party
riding behind, to look after strays and stragglers, the rear-guard.
Usually a herd of cattle along--steers for the plough, young bullocks to
supply beef for consumption on the journey, milch kine to give comfort
to the children and colour to the tea and coffee--among them an old bull
or two, to propagate the species on reaching the projected settlement.
Not unfrequently a drove of pigs, or flock of sheep, with coops
containing ducks, geese, turkeys, Guinea-fowl--perhaps a screaming
peacock, but certainly Chanticleer and his harem.

A train of Texan settlers has its peculiarities, though now not so
marked as in the times of which we write. Then a noted feature was the
negro--his _status_ a slave. He would be seen afoot, toiling on at the
tails of the waggons, not in silence or despondingly, as if the march
were a forced one. Footsore he might be, in his cheap "brogans" of
Penitentiary fabric, and sore aweary of the way, but never sad. On the
contrary, ever hilarious, exchanging jests with his fellow-pedestrians,
or a word with Dinah in the wagon, jibing the teamsters, mocking the
mule-drivers, sending his cachinations in sonorous ring along the moving
line; himself far more mirthful than his master--more enjoying the
march.

Strange it is, but true, that a lifetime of bondage does not stifle
merriment in t